Introduction

Many organizations deploy a virtual desktop infrastructure or server-based desktops based on Microsoft’s Windows Server Remote Desktop Services (RDS) or a similar solution from vendors such as Citrix or VMware. Server-based desktops are deployed for several reasons: to reduce the costs of PC management; to support a consistent user interface and set of applications across a variety of different computing devices, including tablets and smartphones; and to increase security, because the organization’s data can be kept within the data center where the server-based desktops are running on centrally managed and secured servers.

Terminology Defined

Vendors use a variety of terms to describe a server-based desktop solution, including “virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)” and “Terminal Services.” Throughout this report, the term “server-based desktop” is used to describe all desktops hosted on centralized servers running in an organization’s data center, regardless of the underlying technology or infrastructure. The term “session desktop” describes any server-based desktop that runs as an isolated process (called a session) in the server’s OS, and “virtual desktop” refers specifically to a server-based desktop that runs in a virtual machine (VM) hosted on the server. (For definitions of server-based desktops, see the sidebar “Server-Based Desktop Glossary“; and for a brief description of the components of a server-based desktop, see the illustration “A Generic Server-Based Desktop Architecture“.)